At 19, Paula King, was given the task of taking a bipolar family member to the hospital for a check up.
It was here where she fell in love with nursing, inspired by the black doctors and nurses she saw at the Manchester Royal Infirmary’s Rawnsley Building.
From there she embarked on a 30 year career working as a community nurse in places such as Moss Side, Levenshulme and Longsight before settling at the Royal Manchester Infirmary where she is currently a governor.
Throughout the years, Paula, 50, became disheartened by the number of black men and women in the mental health wards lacking the resources they needed to properly look after themselves.
Desperate to see a change, she is now the founder of the Fika Welie group, a team of black professionals who are fundraising to build a culturally appropriate mental health unit for Caribbean and African men and women.
“I was disheartened at seeing black people again and again and the way they looked, they weren’t being cared for outside of medication," she said.
“If a young man with an afro went into the psychiatric system they wouldn’t stand a chance. There was no oil, cream, combs, the simple things really," she said.
The group want the Fika Welie Caribbean and African Mental Health Unit and Research Centre to address the inequalities in mental health support, and treatment of black people in the health and social care system.
Their ambitious plan is for a centre that will provide a range of responsive and appropriate care and services staffed by people who understand the needs of the Caribbean and African communities whilst complementing existing services.
“We want the unit to be open access to people so they can access better care at an institution with people that look like them.” Said Gani Martins, a member of the Fika Welie group.
“It’s about complementing existing services as well, we don’t want to take over but there isn’t anything that is similar to what we’re trying to develop.”
In June 2019, the mental health charity Mind, described the disparities in mental health in its legal newsletter, saying: "Different communities have different experiences of mental health and of treatment.
"At the age of 11 there a very few differences, but by adulthood the picture is different. Black men and white men experience similar rates of common mental health problems but but black women experience substantially higher rates of them than white women.
"When it comes to psychosis black men experience around 10 times more frequently than white men.
"But despite Black people, in very, very broad brush terms, having worse experience of mental health than white people, the latter are more than twice as likely to be receiving treatment for mental health problems.
"If one examines routes to treatment you will see that Black people are 40% more likely to access treatment through a police or criminal justice route, less likely to receive psychological therapies, more likely to be compulsorily admitted for treatment, more likely to be on a medium or high secure ward and be more likely to be subject to seclusion or restraint (56.2 per 100,000 population for Black Caribbean as against 16.2 per 100,000 population for white).
"We must stress that there is a hugely complex picture here, but it seems undeniable that Black people get to the sharper end of treatment in the more uncomfortable ways."
It went on to describe a perception in the black community of the system as inhumane, adding: "Research on clinical decision-making suggests that clinicians hold negative implicit attitudes toward people from minority backgrounds - and that there is a direct link between these attitudes and clinicians' treatment decisions."
It's these inequalities that Fika Welie hopes to address.
“Because there’s so much inequalities in health the moment. When staff get training they’re not really taught about black people and our culture," Paula said.
“When I dealt with a black service user they were more open, not just with information but the real person you’re dealing with came out.
“The guard is usually dropped. There's that relief of having someone that looks like you, speaks like you and understands your language."
You can donate to their crowdfunding page and the group can be contacted for more information at cariboafro@yahoo.com
